10 Comments

alcattle / August 15, 2011

I have multiboxed and belong to a MB guild on Kil’jaeden. It is fun but harder than it looks. Yes you can face roll some content but it takes time to set up 5 toons macros and key bindings.
HotKeyNet was the first program I used and now use ISBoxer. Both have good support and many users.

Kammler / August 9, 2011

Clearly I wasn’t aware this was a external software client. Also, just as clearly, if it was an addon it would be subject to the comments I made, violation of Blizz’s policies.

My intent was to provide a cautionary note to Queen’s readers. I didn’t want anyone unknowingly creating a problem for himself. Legal? Awesome. MB it up guys!

Fair enough, I may be oversensitive to accusations of cheating – because it’s happened more than a few times (though not so much since I stopped leveling my multiboxed characters together – after all, random people walking by can’t tell my milling Paladin is being multiboxed). I nearly made a reply macro to explain that no, multiboxing isn’t against the rules, no I’m not some odd powerleveling service, etc… :\

Guess that’s something people should be aware of – some people DO think it’s cheating, others will think it SHOULD be even once they know it isn’t. Make sure them thinking that isn’t going to stop you…

Pwnboxer is pretty nice, when it works – I had issues with it not grabbing control of the clients properly on my old PC, but on my new one that hasn’t been an issue.

I like that it controls not just key broadcasting, but also the clients themselves – so when I start up my clients, pwnboxer takes care of putting one on one monitor full-screen, another on my other monitor windowed to take about 1/4 the total space. Then once started you can, with a keypress, swap clients – so if I need to switch to my crafting char to restock on mats, I just press F10 and voila, it’s full-screen.

Different profiles are also nice – you would definitely want keys to broadcast a little differently (or a lot differently) based on what you’re doing. Though I do wish it had that for key remapping also (i.e. I press 5 on my keyboard, it sends 5 to my main client and then Control + 5 on my other one; useful for assist macros, especially); the remapping works, but it’s the same for all profiles and characters.

It has some other features too, like screen capture, mouse mirroring, a panel you can see ‘through’ to something behind it, but I don’t ever use them.

kammler / July 29, 2011

I don’t multibox. However, your readers should be aware that the software you link in your post is illegal and could get them a ban for using it.

I’m not going to recap all the threads and discussions here–the short version is that Blizz does not encourage MB but also doesn’t consider it a violation of the EULA. In other words, MB is technically OK by Blizz’s standards.

However, addons that charge money for their use ARE illegal. Any addon must be made available free to use for subscribers. Addons that charge get added to a ‘banware’ list. If caught, users will get a message telling them the addon violates the EULA. Further use of the addon will result in the Banhammer being applied.

I wanted to leave you a video about PwnBoxer which shows that it is not an addon. I’ve done a little more research (Multiboxing is NOT my thing!) and pwnboxer is a separate program that allows you to simultaneously run and control multiple versions of World of Warcraft. It’s run outside your client, part of your pc, not part of WoW. I found the the WoW Addon Policy too.

Either way, I would advise anyone interested in PwnBoxer to do their own research before they decide to buy the software. Personally, I think my battered old PC would blow up if I tried it

Kammler, as Alyzande pointed out after some research (hint hint?) pwnboxer isn’t an addon. It’s a separate program. Saying it’s illegal is like saying Ventrilo is illegal.

I’ve used pwnboxer for about a year now, first just to level some chars (got a pair of druids and a pair of priests up before my RAF ended; wish it’d been up to 80 back then), but for a while I’ve used it to do my glyphing (the milling portion, mostly; crafting of glyphs to a lesser extent; not really useful for actual posting and canceling now). I can be raiding on my main and continue milling on a char sitting in Stormwind. It takes a lot of the tedium out of inscription.

Atruehero / August 25, 2011

I don’t agree on the comparison with Ventrilo. You don’t use Ventrilo to control how your character behaves in WoW. On the other hand, if you control 5 characters with one keystroke by using an external program it sounds a lot like cheating to me. I use Dual boxing atm, and don’t use any external programs for that, it’s just handy when i want to solo a raid dungeon (inv my other char), selling stuff to the opposite auction house etc. Also keep in mind, that for every extra character you use simultaneously, you have to buy an extra copy of WoW, and an extra subscription.